Take Action: Don't let the 1% shut us out at UC and CSU

Amidst growing outrage over police violence against the Occupy movement on the UC Davis and UC Berkeley campuses -- including the pepper spraying and baton beatings of non-violent protesters -- the University of California Board of Regents just announced that they will close their doors to the public when they vote on new cuts to education on November 28th. The public can only “participate” through a sham teleconference.

This echoes the announcement from the California State University Board of Trustees that they will not engage in a public discussion or revote regarding the illegitimate tuition increase they passed behind closed doors last Wednesday. The leadership of both the UC and CSU systems refuse to face thousands of outraged students, faculty, and staff who demand they stop treating the 99% like an ATM.

On November 16th, the Trustees expelled hundreds of students and workers from their meeting before voting behind closed doors to increase tuition by 9%, a move that may be illegal. California's public education system, a promise of the past to the future and a critical way to assure our state's economic growth, has been decimated by $17 billion in budget cuts and tuition increases since 2009. Next month, $2.5 billion in additional cuts are coming, and the 1% on the boards of CSU and UC are again trying to pass them on to students, teachers, and working families. Now is a time where they should be seeking to break from the status quo and support concrete solutions like making banks and millionaires to pay fund education. Instead, they are doing the opposite.

The Regents and the Trustees are made up of corporate elites such as Bank of America Director Monica Lozano and former Wachovia Bank senior executive Russell Gould. It’s time for them to stand with the 99% and support making the 1% pay to fund education.

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ABOUT US: ReFUND California is a coalition of organizations throughout California committed to exposing the unfairness of the state’s current economic reality and engaging in public campaigns to force the changes that are necessary.